Strategy sprints

Our Sprint approach helps you articulate your reason for existence with language that resonates with both your team as well as your audience, helping to get everyone on the same page. We help you build a filter to run decisions through, allowing you to make sure you are spending your time, energy, and money in a way that helps reach your goals.

Whether you’re building a communication strategy for your organization or finding clarity within one department, a Sprint helps to strongly express your mission to any audience.

Three phases of a strategy sprint

One - The War Room

Sprints are a battle-tested process to solve complex problems, so we treat it as such by getting everyone into our strategy-centered war room. We ask you to spend five days with us in our office, locked into the action without distractions, so we can quickly get to the root of the issues at hand. We utilize visual memory, capturing every thought with on going notes, brainstorming on whiteboards, and accessing any other technology necessary for better understanding of where you’ve come from and how to achieve your goals.

Sprints work best when authenticity and openness guide the conversations, especially in the war room. Our time together is short so we ask for honesty all around right from the start as we dig into the following things:

Understanding

Together we define what winning looks like for you. We ask you to put everything on the table: known risks, assets, challenges, and opportunities. This way we know where you are and where you want to go.

Clarity

We begin by helping you articulate why you exist and how you operate. We go in-depth, drilling deeper than may be comfortable so you can clearly tell people who you are as a team at the core. We get out of your industry-specific language in order to communicate something that deeply resonates with people.

Implementation

We outline what you need to do and what you need to stop doing in order to be successful.

Involvement

We help you determine who should be involved, finding both inside and outside partners to cement your team together by winning over influencers and overcoming internal hesitations.

Process

As a team we develop processes that determine when everything happens: meeting structures, projects, milestones. This is the day-to-day roadmap.

Two - Prototype & testing

We follow a Build - Measure - Learn process. This is an approach pioneered by Eric Ries in his book, "The Lean Startup." It is a learning and feedback loop for establishing how effective a product, service, or idea is, and doing this as quickly and cost effectively as possible. The biggest advantage of this technique is it minimizes the risk and cost of creating something no one wants, and helps you to zero in on the things your target audience will embrace.

We have found that a presentation of what was learned in the War Room is the best prototype to build for a Strategy Sprint. Everything is compiled for you to give this presentation to key players back home within two weeks of your time with us. Whether that’s your board of directors, important stakeholders, or the team that does the work on a day to day basis, the presentation is the best way to get immediate feedback about the solutions you want to implement after our week of problem solving together.

We guide you through gathering responses to the presentation in order to know if the solution is on track or if a change in direction is required to move forward. This also helps us understand what pieces to best emphasize and highlight in production of the Playbook.

Three - Playbook

The Playbook entails everything from the Sprint and testing process wrapped up as a laid out plan. Feedback from the presentation is integrated into the content and design of the book, emphasizing the pieces most important to you and the key players on your team.

Simply put, the Playbook is a living, breathing document that details who you are, how you operate, and what you do to best fulfill your mission and goals.

Before the Playbook is in your hands we have an open conversation about how we can help you implement this new strategy because once it is printed and delivered we want you to be well on your way to achieving your goals.